Mermaid vlogging? How does do?

[Alinda the Reef Fish]

So I have been yearning to start a YouTube channel to talk about my mermaid adventures as a young adult lady learning the waves and currents of the mer-community and what it takes to become a professional mermaid. My friends and family are being very supportive of it, but I'm not really sure where to start. Also, I'm kind of shy about being a mer. :$

After reading through so much of the community forums and all the things to beware of, I didn't really see anything about YouTube. :confused: I know that there are a lot of mer-people sharing videos that they've posted to their channels which is awesome, but there's nothing that really says "what to beware of", and "here's some tips on how to start off". This has left me a little lost.

I would love to see a huge community of mer-people feeling comfortable enough to regularly vlog to YouTube about their own mer-experiences, but I also know how icky the internet can be. Merverts especially. All of this has also made me weary about starting a mer-people channel, but I'm not going to let it stop me.

Any recommendations or tips on where to start with Mermaid vlogging? :)

[Mermaid Jaffa]

I have a youtube channel... I disabled the options for people to write comments, statistics. And depending on what I video, I put the vid on private or unlisted and only people I share the vid with can see it. It doesn't come up in searches.

[Winged Mermaid]

It's hard to tell someone HOW to do vlogs. You just kind of pick a topic, think about/research on what you want to talk about with said topic (write it down like you would note cards for a speech to remind you of your main topics to cover if you forget easy), and record yourself talking about it.
Some nice editing will go a long ways too. Like color balancing, contrast, a subscribe button at the end, ect. but it just depends on what your skill level is with that kind of stuff and what programs you have access to. I've never posted a raw unedited video, I always at least help the contrast out a little. But I spent quite a while learning to use some nicer video editing software, and got a computer that has a bomb graphics card and ampted up RAM/processing so it could keep up with the videos I make (after my last computer died, haha). I think google's editor actually has some more basic editing capabilities now (not sure if you need to be a partner to use it or not) if you don't have any editing software whatsoever.

I think the biggest tip that someone would have told me ahead of time is once you start your channel, see if you can get into be a youtube partner so you can monetize them. Sign up for adsense and link it to your youtube (otherwise you don't get paid). It takes quite a while for google to send you the address verification to activate your adsense account so you can start getting paid (as in months), so the sooner you do it the better. It's not much money but it's a little every once in a while. I just lost hundreds of dollars not doing it ahead of time before my channel started getting more views. You can only use music that isn't copyrighted in videos you want to montotize, btw. Youtube has a library to use, and some creative commons folks will allow use of their work in monetized videos as well.

Plus being partner gives you cool perks. Like being able to upload custom thumbnails for your video. I always do that, I find I get a lot more views that way. Always put in a subscribe button at the end and use the spotlight annotations to make the button a link for people to subscribe. When you make a video, post it on social media. Being a pro mer one of the first things you should do is get a social media account for every platform that you'll actually use. Tip: I have a different browser for my mermaid social media. Firefox is my main, and Chrome is my mermaid one. That way I'm not logging in and out of accounts all the time, and it's all right there. Makes it so much eaiser. Anyhow, so then every time you make a video, post the link all around your social media.
Also the longer your a partner the more perks you get. Like being able to upload longer videos. When you start out you can only post 15 minute videos. Now I can upload a video as long as 11 hours now if I wanted to, haha.

I won't go into detail on this stuff, because you can find TONS of information about all of this stuff by googling and doing your own research. Google is your friend, use it ;) There are probably tons of articles and stuff on how to make "better vlogs" as well.

If you're talking about your experiences, if you have the editing capability, include photos and video within your video when you talk about it. (For example, a video in video like on my video here: https://youtu.be/Gnpb-ZpkxYI?t=3m46s and image overlays like in the same video here: https://youtu.be/Gnpb-ZpkxYI?t=10m24s) It engages people more cause they can hear you talk about it and see you doing it.

Lastly if you're worried about creepers, set comments to be approved before they're put up. If you disable comments all together it can kind of distance your audience- this is especially true in vlogs where it's meant to be kind of an interactive experience. But it's up to you.

Uuuuh, yeah. Not sure what else to say! Good luck though! You're welcome to make an ongoing thread in the videography and photography section where you can update it and post new videos in it whenever you put new ones up. Let us know the channel, I'll subscribe ^_^

[Princess Pearl]

Thanks for the browser tip, Iona! I've been lax about my social media stuff for mermaiding because logging in and out of Facebook and Twitter is a hassle. I never thought to use different browsers!

[Alinda the Reef Fish]

Thank you all so much for your input! I've been nervous about starting this but I'm just going to jump in fin-first (That probably doesn't actually work well, does it?)